


You Can Only Watch

by TUNiU



Series: Victor [2]
Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: POV Second Person, Uncharted 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 00:36:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18354992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TUNiU/pseuds/TUNiU
Summary: So this short fic came from the idea that Victor Sullivan dreams of every time the player makes Nathan Drake die, those death-animations feature in Victor's nightmares. Now, pair that with the fact Victor bailed on Nathan in Uncharted 2 and left Nate to get shot and hang off a train trying to find Shambhala on his own.





	You Can Only Watch

From the day you met Nathan Drake you've had nightmares where he dies. (The reality will be so much worse, there's no waking up when it's real.) In your dreams, you'll be a moment too slow as backup, he'll be an inch too far while climbing, there'll be a bullet or a fall just waiting for him. The boy who becomes a man in front of your eyes has the strongest luck you've ever seen, but one day it will run out. And you'll see it. You do most treasure hunts together, two man crews are more reliable, but you're old and not as spry. So you'll be one step behind him when it happens: when he takes that bullet and collapses to the ground dead. Or maybe you'll be watching from a ledge as he doesn't quite make a leap and you'll scream his name as he falls.

"Oh god, Nathan!" 

There's never blood in your nightmares. Just Nate, sprawled out on the grass, or the sand, or the street, like a puppet with the strings cut. You'll run up to him because no one is shooting anymore, now that they killed him. You're not important enough to warrant a bullet of your own, not without him. You'll run to him but he'll already be gone, face slack, staring blindly up at the sky. A gaping chasm will tear through your heart and if you're lucky the nightmare will end there. Sometimes you're stuck with him like that and you're crying like you haven't since you were a child.

You'll wake with your heart pounding, absolutely sure Nate is dead this time. It takes a long time to calm down from those nightmares. It helps if you're sharing a hotel for the job. Nate is just a door away and there are signs he's around, debris in your room from planning. He always plans in your room and goes to sleep in his own, has since he was a child.

When you're away from him, increasingly more as the years pass, you've got to get more creative in reminding yourself he still lives. He doesn't always answer his phone, but he sends postcards. It's all kitchy crap from whatever country he happens to be in, all 'wish you were here',  but Nate gets a kick out of sending them to you. He smiles whenever he sees them in your duffel, buried at the bottom, with a rubber band holding them together. And you always keep the latest postcard to hand, so you can see the postmark date and know he's still okay whenever you dream he died.   


* * *

The both of you make a death defying leap away from Harry Flynn and bullets, but you tell him you're bowing out of this Marco Polo treasure hunt. You've been shot too much in this life, and all this climbing and leaping is for the young. Nate doesn't get it, the lesson this adventure is teaching you (know when to bow out). But when you're dry and safe you wish him well. You tell him you expect a postcard from wherever this adventure leads him and you look forward to seeing his drawings, because he never brings a camera. (You haven’t felt this hinky about a treasure hunt since Panama and Rafe Adler and Sam.)   


* * *

A few days later, you get a call from Elena Fisher. You haven’t seen or heard from Elena in two years, not since she and Nate scurried off with their cut of the El Dorado treasure for some alone time. (They got some funny ideas about romantic). The connection is terrible, routed through a satellite phone and international ocean floor wiring. But you hear, clear as day, that Nate's been shot bad in Tibet. You don't wonder what Elena is doing in Tibet or how she got your number. She begs you to come and by the time you get to that remote Tibetan village (riding planes, and trains, and when the tracks are blocked by a derailment: buses, and horses) both Nate and Elena are laid out, looking inches from death. Chloe Frazer is there, helping a local care for them. The bandages wrapped around Nate's waist are spotted with blood, while Elena's entire chest is wrapped and still bleeding. They lay on bedrolls side by side, his right hand almost touching her left.

Later, Chloe will tell you the whole story, about Lazarevic's goal and how Harry Flynn almost killed both Nate and Elena. (If Flynn wasn't already dead, you feel like you could strangle the life out of him). Chloe will tell you how Nate fought Lazarevic and destroyed Shambhala while barely recovered from his gut shot, how he tore his stitches carrying a half dead Elena to safety, how Elena is the one they're really worried about because some of the shrapnel went too deep.

For now, you sit at Nate's other side and watch over him. The reality is so much worse than the nightmares. You weren't there. Your boy and his girl were bleeding out on a remote mountain top and you had no idea. (You will be best man at their wedding, and her scars will be healed enough to be almost invisible in the pictures. They will never fully fade.) You weren’t there to help.

They both heal and the time they spend recuperating brings them closer together, and you think, maybe this close call knocked some wariness into Nate, maybe now he gets it, maybe this is when he bows out of this game.

In one year’s time, Nate and Elena get married and you’re the best man. Later, when Sam sees the photo album of all Nate's life he missed those 15 years in prison, you hope that he too learns that it’s okay to leave the game without ever getting the big score, but he goes off with you on another adventure and you’re just happy for the company of a Drake.

(In three years time, Nate and Elena are living on separate continents, because he never learned when to let go, and you can’t do anything but watch as he runs away from the best thing that ever happened to him.)   
  


**Author's Note:**

> Again with the second-person perspective. This was harder to write than the first, I guess the technique doesn't feel as fresh to me. Whatever. I have a third one half written, and a fourth one planned.


End file.
